One Woman Can, Rewrite A Textbook!

A Texas mother and a PhD candidate specializing in education curriculum, Roni Dean-Burren called out Textbook publisher McGraw-Hill for whitewashing slavery in her son’s 9th grade geography textbook.

The textbook states the “Atlantic slave trade brought millions of workers from Africa to the Americas”. She posted an image of the passage on Facebook with the caption “Workers implies wages… yes?”. She later posted a video of the textbook passage which went viral and caught the attention of the textbook publisher McGraw-Hill.

The publishing company responded to their Facebook page “We Believe we can do better” and printed a revised edition of the passage to more appropriately describe that people were taken from Africa and forced into slave labor in the Americas. The revised edition of the text will be available in their next digital edition, however most schools may continue to use that textbook for another 8-10 years said Dean-Burren.

One woman can make a difference, One woman can change the efforts of whitewashing Black culture. Many women can put a halt to systematic racism. As a collective we have the power to change all textbooks and remove inaccurate statements from textbooks. There is no excuse in this day and age for children to continue to be taught lies written by white conservatives in textbooks. It is important that all children realize the true history of how America was built. It is even more important for Black children to understand that they are more important than what most history books lead them to believe. It is crucial for people to understand that Black Lives Matter.